From periodic exhibition to year-round global platform, the third edition deepens institutional collaboration, curatorial experimentation, and the living study of Islamic heritage.
The 2025 Islamic Arts Biennale at the Western Hajj Terminal of King Abdulaziz International Airport, image courtesy of the Diriyah Biennale Foundation.
The Diriyah Biennale Foundation has announced the dates and expanded vision for the third edition of the Islamic Arts Biennale, set to open from 1 November 2027 through 1 March 2028 at the Aga Khan Award–winning Western Hajj Terminal of King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Positioned once again within this vast architectural canopy, the Biennale returns to a site long defined by movement, convergence, and spiritual passage.
Jeddah, the historic Red Sea port city, has for centuries functioned as a threshold, receiving millions of pilgrims en route to Makkah and Madinah. It is within this geography of arrival and departure that the Islamic Arts Biennale has carved out a distinctive platform, one that places the arts of Islamic civilisations into dialogue across time. Conceived and launched by the Diriyah Biennale Foundation, the Biennale remains the first and only global biennial dedicated exclusively to the exploration of Islamic arts, past and present.
What distinguishes the Islamic Arts Biennale is its curatorial proposition. Rather than confining Islamic art to the historical vitrine, it stages encounters between rare historical objects and newly commissioned contemporary works. Manuscripts, textiles, architectural fragments, and devotional objects appear alongside installations, digital works, and architectural interventions. The result is not a survey, but a conversation, one that reframes Islamic heritage as living, generative, and in constant negotiation with the present.
The scale of this undertaking has grown with each edition. Across its first two iterations, the Biennale presented more than 500 historical objects from over 40 institutions spanning 20 countries. The second edition tripled the number of participating institutions, signalling both expanded trust and deepened collaboration. Strategic partnerships with Saudi institutions, including the General Authority for the Care of the Two Holy Mosques, the King Abdulaziz Waqf Libraries Assembly, and the King Abdulaziz Centre for World Culture, Ithra, have enabled unprecedented public presentations. Among the most notable was the 2025 display of the Kiswah of the Holy Kaaba in its entirety outside Makkah for the first time, an event that underscored the Foundation’s commitment to accessibility and stewardship of sacred heritage.
The 2027 edition signals not only continuity but structural evolution. The Foundation has announced that both the Islamic Arts Biennale and the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale will open at the end of each year, aligning with the Kingdom’s wider cultural calendar and allowing for sustained institutional focus. At the heart of this recalibration is AlMadar, meaning “The Orbit,” a landmark initiative designed to transform the Biennale from a periodic exhibition into a year-round global platform.
Launched during the inaugural edition, AlMadar reflects a conceptual shift, viewing Islamic heritage not as a closed canon but as an evolving field shaped by scholarship, craft, migration, and reinterpretation. Moving forward, AlMadar will operate across four pillars. AlMadar Exhibition will continue to anchor each Biennale edition, accompanied by an expanded suite of public programs. AlMadar Digital will function as a research and storytelling repository, leveraging technology to facilitate global access and collaboration. AlMadar Initiatives will support symposia, talks, and workshops that nurture research and creative practice, while AlMadar Community will establish a network connecting institutions for sustained knowledge exchange.
For H.E. Rakan Altouq, Vice Chairman of the Foundation’s Board of Trustees, the third edition marks a consolidation of ambition. He notes that each iteration has expanded how the arts of the Islamic world are presented and studied, emphasising experimentation and contemporary relevance. The Foundation now seeks to translate its exhibition model into year-round exchange programs, solidifying relationships with artists, scholars, and institutions.
Aya Al-Bakree, CEO of the Diriyah Biennale Foundation, underscores the significance of the Western Hajj Terminal as both a symbolic and practical site. Beneath its expansive canopy, she describes a new model for institutional collaboration and art historical writing, one capable of evolving with each edition. For the Foundation, the creation of connections across vast stretches of time and geography is not a rhetorical flourish, but an institutional mandate.
The curatorial leadership of the 2027 edition will be selected through a Foundation-led call for proposals, followed by committee evaluation. The resulting team will draw on multidisciplinary expertise across archaeology, architecture, art history, contemporary art, and cartography. This breadth reflects the Biennale’s expanded ambition to examine Islamic arts not only as aesthetic production but as spatial practice, intellectual tradition, and lived culture.
As the Islamic Arts Biennale moves toward its third chapter, it does so with a sharpened focus and a broader scope. No longer merely a periodic exhibition, it is positioning itself as a sustained platform for preservation, interpretation, and experimentation. In Jeddah, at a site historically defined by transit and devotion, the Biennale continues to ask how Islamic art can be convened, studied, and experienced anew, not as static inheritance, but as orbit, as circulation, as living exchange.
For more information, please visit the Diriyah Biennale Foundation.
